Rehabilitation Techniques for Walls during the 18th Century in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia)

ABSTRACT

Although it may be thought that the rehabilitation of historical structures is a concern of modern engineering, studies on intervention processes from the past allow us to understand that this is a work carried out frequently and sometimes as a solution to low budgets for the construction of new buildings, or the need to offer quick practical solutions. The objective of this article is to show the way in which during the second half of the 18th century several important architectural and structural rehabilitation works were carried out in the walls of Cartagena de Indias, in view of the damage caused by the enemy attacks to the city as well as continuous impact by nature. By making use of primary sources (plans and original reports), the way in which two of the interventions were executed can be reconstructed: one on the Muralla Real, and another on the San José bastion, gathering information that helps explain their current state of conservation.     

The Tagus Middle Basin (Iberian Peninsula) from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (V-I Millennium Cal. BC): The Long Way to Social Complexity

This study is the result of surveys and excavations carried out in a selected area of the middle basin of the Tagus river (Southern Meseta, Iberian Peninsula). The analysis of palaeoecological data, material assemblages, settlement patterns, domestic structures, funerary evidence and socio-economic context in the regional archaeological record from the Neolithic (5000 BC) to the beginning of the Iron Age (500 BC) allows us to identify several long-term historic processes; particularly, two habitational, demographic and socio-economic cycles, which contradict the traditional idea that the prehistory of inner Iberia presents almost no apparent change during these four millennia.     

Order in movement: a GIS approach to accessibility

The aim of this paper is to extend the range of current analytical procedures that archaeologists use to understand movement. In particular, how a landscape becomes ordered by simply defining a destination. More specifically, this study proposes the derivation of a focal mobility network, i.e. the network of most likely paths towards a given destination, and explores several of its applications within a landscape archaeology framework. The suggested extensions are based on existing standard procedures within most GIS. A series of synthetic control surfaces and an archaeological study focused around Iron Age hillforts in Galicia (NW Spain) are used as case studies to illustrate different analytical possibilities.     

Presence of the genus Cuon in upper Pleistocene and initial Holocene sites of the Iberian Peninsula: new remains identified in archaeological contexts of the Mediterranean region

The dhole (Cuon alpinus) has been documented on the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Middle and Upper Pleistocene in archaeological and palaeontological contexts. However, this is an uncommon species among the Iberian quaternary faunae as a whole. This paper focuses on the remains of the genus Cuon recovered in three different sites of the Iberian Mediterranean region and their morphological and osteometrical study. By comparing these with fourteen complete skeletons of Canis lupus, as well as with other remains of C. alpinus, we intend to highlight some anatomical and metrical differences between Cuon and Canis that, added to those already published, could be a functional base-line for the identification of this genus. The identification of this species is complex, especially in archaeological contexts, and in some cases the dhole has been identified as Canis or Canidae. Furthermore, this paper explores the chronology of the presence of the dhole in the Iberian Peninsula and the different contexts where these animals have been recovered from.